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Trial for alleged killer delayed after new attorneys appointed

By Caleb Warnock - Daily Herald - | Aug 1, 2012

AMERICAN FORK — Prosecutors reluctantly agreed on Tuesday to move back a jury trial for a man facing the death penalty for allegedly killing a former BYU professor.

Police say Martin Bond slit Kay Mortensen’s throat on Nov. 16, 2009, during a robbery. Bond faces one capital murder charge and five first-degree felonies for aggravated kidnapping, aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery.

Bond had been expected to go on trial in October. On Tuesday, 4th District Judge Thomas Low rescheduled the trial to Jan. 7. The trial is expected to last 11 days.

Bond, 25, appeared in shackles in an American Fork courtroom on Tuesday afternoon. His new attorney, Rudy Bautista, said the planned October trial needed to be delayed to give the new defense team time to get comfortable with the case. Bautista was appointed last week after Bond’s previous attorney quit.

“We do not believe we can put together a litigation case in such a short time,” Bautista said.

Low asked the prosecution to weigh in on delaying the trial. The prosecutors said they were not happy but want to be realistic, considering the circumstances.

Attorney Stephen Howard is expected to be approved as co-counsel for Bond. Howard was not present on Tuesday. That caused a few moments of pause, because Howard will be lead counsel. Low said he would set a trial date in January, despite the fact that Howard was not present and had not yet been approved by the judge.

Meanwhile, Bond and attorneys will be back in court at 1:30 on Aug. 21 to schedule trial motions and other proceedings.

Bautista’s appointment as defense counsel came after a surprisingly difficult effort to find Bond an attorney. When the case began, prosecutors initially suspected Mortensen’s son, Roger, and daughter-in-law, Pamela. Police arrested the couple and over the course of several months Roger was represented by the Utah County public defender’s office.

After a tip implicated Bond and Benjamin Rettig — who pleaded guilty in June 2011 and is serving a minimum 25-year prison sentence — the public defender’s office could no longer work on the case due to conflicts of interest. Defense attorneys Ron Yengich and Earl Xaiz were hired, but the duo withdrew from the case in June after experiencing conflicts with Bond.

In June, Bond also rejected an offer from prosecutors that would have removed the possibility of the death penalty in exchange for a guilty plea. Had he accepted the deal, Bond would have faced life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Instead, the case will move forward to trial and if convicted, Bond could wind up on death row. According to prosecutor Tim Taylor, that prospect also complicated the search for an attorney because Bond’s lawyer had to be certified to work on death penalty cases. Taylor explained that many of the attorneys normally hired as conflict counsel do not hold that qualification.

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